During the first academic session of the college in 1880 courses in physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics were offered to students. By 1881 courses in geology and mineralogy, botany and vegetable physiology, engineering, English language and literature, Greek and Latin, and French and German language and literature were also available. From 1882 Medical students at Queen's College, Birmingham were able to attend classes in botany, physiology and chemistry, and in 1892 the medical faculty of Queen's College was transferred to Mason College.^[9] There was also a short-lived department of 'Mental and Moral Science', which was not successful despite funds being gifted specifically to support the endeavor in 1882.^[11]

academic and writer

Edward Arber

chemist and physicist, 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Francis William Aston

British Prime Minister^[13]

Stanley Baldwin

Sir , 1st Baronet, physician

Gilbert Barling

cytogeneticist who developed the iron-acetocarmine staining technique which is used in the study of chromosomes

John Belling

Sir , Professor of classics

Nathan Bodington

FRS, pioneer in the study of enzyme kinetics

Adrian John Brown

British-Canadian mycologist mainly known as a researcher of fungi and wheat rust

Arthur Henry Reginald Buller

British Prime Minister^[14]

Neville Chamberlain

FRSE (1867–1951), taught in the college^[15]

Lawrence Crawford (mathematician)

Sir , Chairman of the British Medical Association 1943–49 (M.B. medicine)^[16]^[17]

Guy Dain

German scholar

Hermann Georg Fiedler

locomotive engineer

Sir Henry Fowler

chemist

Percy F. Frankland

set up the first operational (military) meteorological service, Deputy Director of the Meteorological Office

Ernest Gold

discovered an anticoagulant created by the leech, which he named hirudin

John Berry Haycraft

physician and composer

John Rippiner Heath

FRS, English mathematician, known for Hill's spherical vortex and Hill's tetrahedra

Micaiah John Muller Hill

pioneering colonial administrator in Kenya

Charles William Hobley

Professor of Physics at Royal Holloway College and Vice-Chancellor of the University of London 1939–45

Frank Horton

ornithologist

Henry Eliot Howard

FRS, chemist

Arthur Lapworth

FRS, FGS, geologist who pioneered faunal analysis using index fossils and identified the Ordovician period

Charles Lapworth

parasitologist and helminthologist

Robert Thomson Leiper

engineer and one of the pioneers of aeronautics

Lionel Simeon Marks

publisher who established the publishing company Mills & Boon

Gerald Rusgrove Mills

philosopher

John Henry Muirhead

poet and philosopher

Constance Naden

English grammarian and lexicographer and the fourth editor of the Oxford English Dictionary

Charles Talbut Onions

novelist and art historian

Kineton Parkes

Sir , Professor of Paediatrics, dean of Birmingham medical school, in 1932 the first to use synthetic vitamin C to treat scurvy in children^[16]^[18]

Leonard Parsons

Sir , chemist who did pioneering work in stereochemistry and was Vice Chancellor of the University of London from 1937–1939

Robert Howson Pickard

physicist

John Henry Poynting

Dame , geologist, public servant and philanthropist

Ethel Shakespear

Classical Scholar and writer on Latin grammar and verse

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein

Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge

F. J. M. Stratton

Sir , chemist

William A. Tilden

physiologist

Swale Vincent

FRS, geologist

William Whitehead Watts

philologist and historian of science and medicine

Wilmer Cave Wright

Liberal Member of Parliament

John Howard Whitehouse

Sir , physician

Bertram Windle

Notable academics and alumni of the college include:^[12]

Ordnance Survey 1st Edition Map, 1890

Mason Science College